when I try to play some music cds om my laptop they either dont appear in
the DVD-RW drive with nothing happening or I get a error message. These are
commercial music cds, not burnt. With some other commercial cds I have no
problem. I've selected the appropriate program / action in autoplay and it
doesnt make any difference. drivers seem to be working Ok. any ideas. I'm
running XP Home Edition and this problem has only happened over the last 6
months.

"Brad" <Brad @discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C0E996AD-3211-427B-A2B1-(E-Mail Removed)...
> when I try to play some music cds om my laptop they either dont appear in
> the DVD-RW drive with nothing happening or I get a error message. These
> are
> commercial music cds, not burnt. With some other commercial cds I have no
> problem. I've selected the appropriate program / action in autoplay and it
> doesnt make any difference. drivers seem to be working Ok. any ideas.
> I'm
> running XP Home Edition and this problem has only happened over the last 6
> months.

Many music CDs are copy protected these days. Some copy protection systems
are deliberately designed to prevent the disc from playing in computer
drives. Others have to load a piece of software first that allows the
playing but prevents ripping of the tracks. At least one scheme has made
serious and damaging alterations to Windows itself. If the music 'CD's you
are refering to don't have the 'Compact Disc' logo on them anywhere then
they are almost certainly copy protected. They cannot legally be described
or sold as 'CD's or 'Compact Disc's because they don't conform to the
specification.

Some music publishers of late have decided that the cost of the copy
protection is not worth it.